You are traveling through another dimension, a...

You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension of sights and sounds, a dimension of the mind--the bureaucratic mind.

A young man named Rick Brown of Playa del Rey is driving down Sepulveda Boulevard in El Segundo when he sees something so bizarre that he must pull over and photograph it.

The signpost up ahead:

Blank!

Brown has come upon a state highway with no number. He has entered . . . Caltrans’ Twilight Zone.

List of the Day:

Tantalizing tidbits from “Historic Torrance,” by Dennis F. Shanahan and Charles Elliott Jr.:

1--After founding the town that bears his name, Jared Sidney Torrance continued to live in South Pasadena. 2--One of the names that was rejected for the town was Industrial. (Would that have preempted the formation of the City of Industry? The mind reels.)

3--One of Torrance’s earliest purchases was its “first traffic motorcycle . . . for $225 from a Mr. Peterson of Redondo Beach” in 1921. Four months later, the city authorized selling the machine for $150 because it required “too many repairs.”

4--A 1930s Torrance development, trumpeted as a future celebrity community with a highway running directly to the movie studios, was called Hollywood Riviera.

5--The Torrance-Redondo Beach boundary line passed through the middle of the now-defunct Hollywood Riviera Beach Club, sometimes “causing imbibers and late-night revelers to shift their base of operations a few feet” when drinking hours ended in one of the two cities.

Hollywood Riviera is one of those Southern California spots that sounds as though it should be somewhere else. Lake Los Angeles, a community around a dry riverbed near Lancaster, is another. Raul Blacksen of Maywood offers a third: Until Commerce was incorporated, he writes, “parts of it were called ‘Laguna Maywood.’ ”

Motorists should thank ex-Dodger Fernando Valenzuela for keeping secret the location of his workouts before his recent signing with the Angels. The gawkers’ block could have been serious. Valenzuela trained for several weeks at Veterans Park in the City of Commerce--the park right off the Santa Ana Freeway.

David Rizzo is a popular guest for daytime radio hosts who want to ensure that they hear from plenty of listeners. Rizzo was bombarded with calls on the Ken & Barkley Show on KABC recently. Reason: He’s the author of “Freeway Alternatives: A Guide to Commuting in L.A. And Orange Counties.”

“People were calling from their cars on the freeway,” Rizzo explained, “asking me how to get out of the mess.”

miscelLAny:

A popular extension class at Pierce College in Woodland Hills is “Overcoming Driving Fears.”